With the likes of Lance Armstrong being busted for winning his Tour de France events high on steroids (a performance enhancing substance), you would think that relaxing with a good joint of weed (not a performance enhancing substance), such as Nick Diaz likes to do would not be much of an issue. Not so much…

Nick Diaz was suspended by the Nevada State Athletic Commission earlier this year after testing positive for marijuana metabolites out of his fight with Carlos Condit at UFC 143. The NSAC hit him with a stiff fine of nearly 40% of his earnings from the card, which came to just under $80,000, and suspended him a year.

He and his legal team have been fighting his suspension for smoking pot since then on the merits of vaguely worded NSAC policy and enforcement, and after appealing to the NSAC themselves to no avail, they brought the case to a Nevada courtroom. Unfortunately for them, that has thus far failed as well.

Diaz’s petition for judicial review was dismissed last week, leaving in place the suspension and fine. However, his Nevada attorney was leaving open the option of a costly legal battle with the Nevada State Supreme Court.

“Despite expressing misgivings about the vagueness and ambiguity of the Nevada Athletic Commission’s prohibition on using marijuana ‘before’ a contest, the Nevada District Court today dismissed Nick Diaz’s petition for judicial review of the athletic commission’s disciplinary order made against him earlier this year,” Goodman’s statement read. “Judge [Joanna] Kishner was obviously troubled about due process concerns engendered by the vagueness of the anti-doping rule. How long before is ‘before’ under the regulation? A day? A week? Due process requires that fighters have clear notice of what the rule is, so they can adjust their behavior accordingly. Similar serious concerns relate to the commission’s after-the-fact definitions of undefined terms on the pre-fight questionnaire – and punishing my client for failing to correctly guess how those terms would be defined.” source